The proliferation of sensitive corporate data outside of corporate-controlled infrastructures is becoming more widespread as IT departments allow employees to use personal computing devices, such as mobile phones, tablets, etc., to access the corporate-controlled infrastructures. IT departments have little control over employee-owned devices. Data loss can occur when an employee or former employee distributes or misplaces corporate data to third parties. Of the two sources, the loss of data in devices that are owned by former employees is more of a concern.
Current solutions for providing such security are broadly called “Mobile Device Management” solutions. Such solutions require the corporation to install a software agent on each personal computing device. In the event the device is lost or the employee leaves the corporation, the software agent can be remotely activated to delete all data owned by the corporation on the device. At the same time, the agent does not delete personal data such as photos, etc., that belong to the user rather than the corporation. The installation and management of software agents on each computing device, whether privately owned by the employee or owned by the corporation, is a difficult and expensive process as there are a large number of different devices running different software systems.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section. Similarly, issues identified with respect to one or more approaches should not assume to have been recognized in any prior art on the basis of this section, unless otherwise indicated.